Map Shows The Salary You Need To Afford A Home In Every State

Where does your state rank?

Chances are you’ve considered how much money you would need to earn in order to buy a home. The answer, of course, depends largely on where you live. To give you an idea, finance website HowMuch.net recently crunched the housing affordability numbers for each state to ensure you spend your money wisely.

To arrive at its estimates, the website layered in several factors. The team collected average home prices in every state from Zillow, then plugged those figures into a mortgage calculator to determine monthly payments. HowMuch.net considered an interest rate that varied between 4 and 5 percent in each state. Also, it was assumed buyers were contributing a 10-percent down payment.

Given that many financial advisors recommend the total cost of housing take up no more than 30 percent of gross income (i.e. the amount before taxes, retirement savings, etc.), the data team used that rule as a benchmark to calculate the minimum salary needed to afford the average home in each state. The figures are based on 30-year mortgages.

Next, we took HowMuch.net’s findings a step further by including the latest U.S. Census Bureau data on median household income to help illustrate how affordable a home purchase may actually be for the average person living in that state.

Ready to see how your state fares when it comes to affordability and home prices?